Count My Sins
by hey y'all watch this
Summary: Modern day AU. Will has something to prove. Cass has a history that is quickly catching up with her. With a vicious plague unleashed upon Araluen and a civil war looming, can they put aside their inner demons and stop more people from dying? Sequel to When We Collide
1. Prologue

**Prologue**

Alexander Tennyson had not been scared once in the twenty years he had run Outsiders, Inc. That had all changed six months ago. The attempt to tie up loose ends in the Ferris O'Carrick case, eradication of the Genovesan team he had recruited from the former president of Araluen, had failed. Miserably. All four Genovesans had survived, and Genovesans were notorious for their intolerance for insult.

Attempted assassination of a team of assassins would certainly count as insult in their book.

He had thought it would be simple. Hire one assassin to shoot the rest, then have an unfortunate accident befall the fourth.

Bacari Herrera wasn't supposed to have missed.

Now, he was seeing things everywhere. The reflection of the sun on a windowpane could have been the glint of a sniper's rifle. The oily surface of his coffee could be poison. The slight teenagers that passed him in the street could have been one of the assassins, watching his movements, waiting to strike.

Even in hiding, in Picta of all places, there was a shadow looming in his mind. His days were coming to an end. He had already cashed out of Outsiders, Inc, leaving the company in ruin and almost a hundred thousand bankrupt. There was enough money in an offshore account for him to live rich for the rest of the century. Besides, Picta and Araluen had been negotiating an extradition treaty for more than ten years and nothing had come of it. The odds were on his side. But he still couldn't shake that fear.

* * *

Even though the air in Araluen City wasn't that healthy, it was still outside air, not the too-sterile hospital air Trobar had been breathing for the past twelve hours. A recent rain had washed the city clean, and the light evening breeze was cool on the giant's face. He was happy.

Trobar was about to go back inside when he heard a faint voice. He turned his head slightly, thinking the voice had come from inside the hospital. Doctor Malcolm Malkallam, the only family the giant had ever known, could have been calling him for supper. But that wasn't it. The voice had been female.

He set out for the treelike, massive strides carrying him there with only a few steps. The voice called again. This time, he could understand what the girl was saying. "Help me!" It was coming from the small stone courtyard a few meters away.

"Hello?" Trobar called, but because of his cleft palate deformity, it sounded more like, "Ha'o?"

A soft grunt answered him. He rounded a large oak tree and found the girl leaning on the other side, her eyes closed.

He cautiously reached out and shook her shoulder. The girl didn't respond. Perhaps he should have gone to get Malcolm.

He shook her again, a little harder. Her body, slack already, was deprived of its support and collapsed. Trobar was barely able to catch the girl before she hit the ground.

Malcolm would definitely want to see the girl.

As gently as he could, Trobar scooped up her legs and carried her into the hospital.

Malcolm, who had, in fact, been about to call Trobar in for supper, met him at the door. "Trobar, supper is-who is she? What happened?"

To the best of his abilities, Trobar related hearing the voice, then finding the unconscious girl. Malcolm nodded periodically, showing that he understood the giant's half-intelligible speech.

"Take her to examination room five on the third floor," the bird like doctor said when Trobar was finished, "then go get yourself some dinner." Trobar had already set off towards the stairs, as he didn't fit in the elevator very well, when Malcolm called something else over his shoulder. "Send Seth up there, if you can find him. This might be a long night.

Trobar broke one of Malcolm's rules after he left the girl in Malcolm's care on the third floor; he ate in one of the hospital's many hallways. The gentle giant had never seen a patient first, and he was incredibly concerned for the girl, so he sat in the hallway outside examination room five, listening, hoping that the girl was going to be okay.

He had finally dozed off when Malcolm reached a diagnosis.

"Seth, give me your phone!" the doctor sounded more urgent than usual.

"What's going on?" Seth, Malcolm's assistant asked, even as he handed over his phone. Malcolm was dialing the moment his fingertips made contact with the phone.

"We need to alert the president. A strand of weaponized KALKARA has been released."

* * *

"The stage is set. The curtain rises. We are ready to begin." - _Sherlock_ , "The Abominable Bride"

* * *

 **A/N. Welcome back.**


	2. Past Critical

**Chapter 1: Past Critical**

Cassandra Elizabeth Reyes had more than twenty aliases that her father didn't know about and identification papers to go with every single name on the list. That had been from another life, before she had been caught, but it didn't stop her from taking full advantage of the list and carrying on her work with the Araluen Investigatory Service. Also called the AIS, it was Araluen's "one-government-agency-fits-all" federal law enforcement and intelligence department and and a vital tool in her efforts to track down and assassinate Alexander Tennyson, a real estate tycoon and Ponzi scammer who had been unlucky enough to put a hit out on her six months earlier.

Of course, she had to balance that with her time in school.

She had attended the boarding school her father had mandated, but, for an individual of her talents, the rigorous schooling had been a minute irritation. She had skipped most of her classes, stolen the tests and memorized the answers, and pilfered papers off the internet, changing key words and altering sentence structure to avoid plagiarism detection. In one of her more inspired ventures, she hacked the school's system and changed her status from the junior she had gone in as to a senior about to graduate. There were more important things in the world to worry about than her graduation from high school. She could speak six languages, kill a man a hundred different ways with a toothpick, and assimilate into any background. Calculus and Classical Literature were a waste of time.

Fortunately, the school took extensive breaks, so she had a month off during which she could catch up on field work while the rest of her "classmates" enjoyed their Christmas holidays. Cass was working for AIS as a new security service agent named Adriana Knight, and her current assignment was to the Presidential Complex, pretending to be one of the people who was supposed to be protecting her. _I didn't have a choice._ She was rationalizing as she walked her circuit, following some of the exact same steps she had taken when she, her former partner Marisi, plus two Rangers named Will and Gil, and a special forces operative named Horace but called Jake attacked the complex six months earlier. _I need the information I can get from AIS, and I can't get it unless I'm an agent._ Marisi was helping her with the Tennyson case, but he was covered up. She needed to pull her own weight.

Besides that, Marisi wasn't even in the country at the moment. In order to ensure her cooperation, her father had threatened to imprison both Marisi and Luciano, another member of her former team, for espionage. She had been forced to agree to the terms, but had made sure that they both were in a country without an extradition agreement the moment Luciano, who had been recovering from a gunshot wound at the time, was fit to travel. If Duncan Reyes, her father and the current president of Araluen, found out about what she had been doing, he'd be furious, but there would be nothing he could do.

She smirked at the thought. Duncan needed a periodic pissing off if he thought he could control her. She would have been content to go to prison. A passing though of empathy crossed her mind. She felt bad for the father who had lost his daughter, only to find a monster in her place, but that gave him no right to manipulate her.

"Knight to Marklet," Cass said into her radio. After Luciano, a former soldier named Kendall Marklet had been assigned to the control center. After their attack, the entire security system had been revamped. Cass could still see some flaws in it, but she kept quiet. There was no telling when she'd need to exploit them again.

"Go ahead, Knight." Marklet's gravelly tones reminded her of a former instructor. A geography teacher who had been to every country he talked about had had the same gravelly tones. She was pretty sure that he had once been army as well.

"All clear on second floor. Proceeding back to base."

"Copy that." She was on the stairwell before Marklet contacted her again. "Market to Knight."

"Go ahead." Cassandra was suddenly on high alert. Something was wrong. Marklet didn't contact field security unless absolutely necessary.

"Mason missed his last checkpoint, and I've been unable to find him or raise him on the secondary channel. Return to first floor and perform recon on Mason's route."

"10-4," Cass answered. She pulled a six inch tactical blade from a sheath at her waist, and stuck it up her sleeve. Marklet, plus anyone she passed, would see if she upholstered her firearm. AIS had an irritating policy on lethal force, but she would rather be safe than sorry. Knives weren't technically included in that policy.

She felt that familiar adrenaline building up in her veins. Instead of giving herself over to the rush and instinct, she channeled it and forced herself to slowly creep towards her destination. There was too much about her, about her fighting style, that could be recognized. She was already walking on thin ice; she didn't need to start juggling flamethrowers while she was at it.

Mason wasn't on the first floor.

"Knight to Marklet," she muttered into her radio, trying to avoid tourist attention. Most of the first floor was open to tourists, which would have made it easy for anyone to access Mason while he was patrolling.

"Go ahead," Marklet said. She could hear typing as he spoke.

"That's gonna be a negative on Mason on the first floor. Do you want me to perform recon on subterranean levels?"

"Recon on first floor down. If you haven't found him, wait for backup before searching lower levels."

Cass continued towards the stairs, very familiar with the steps she was taking. _Don't think about it._ Too late; she was thinking about it.

"Marklet to Knight."

"Go ahead."

"Don't hesitate to use lethal force. A lot of people are jumpy right now."

Cass raised an eyebrow, staring at her radio. Marklet had sounded almost sentimental. _What's going on? Why would people be jumpy?_

The first subterranean floor wasn't open to the public, and was generally only used by the complex kitchen staff and the security. At that point in the afternoon, it should have been practically deserted. Most of the staff were on break for another hour. The kitchen was empty.

Her heartrate settled into its normal adrenaline-laced rhythm when she heard muffled voices coming from the computer terminal. Every floor had computer access so that updates could be made to the mainframe as quickly as possible. Every staff member had a login that would take them to a different part of the system. And security personnel could access all of it in case of emergencies.

She carefully approached the terminal room, Glock taking the place of the tactical knife. Marklet had authorized use of force, so force she would use. She could make out Mason's voice at that point, and it didn't sound like he was taking a computer break.

"I've already told you! I don't have access to that information. Only the president himself and a few other people would have access to any data on a release of any bioweapon."

"My daughter is missing," another voice persisted. "Now, get me the information on where the victims are being treated."

"I can't," Mason insisted, though Cass knew that, with a little creative hacking, he could have had the information. Mason was a good enough programmer, on top of being a member of the Secret Service branch of the AIS. But he was a stickler for the rules, and probably would rather have been shot than have it be known that he let the intruder into any classified information.

"AIS," Cass said, turning the corner and training her weapon on the intruder. She took great care to make a show of drawing a bead on the man. He held a .38 revolver and likely had Mason's service weapon, a .40 caliber pistol, stashed somewhere on his person.

"Don't come any closer," the intruder, a slight, balding man of about forty, said as he locked his arm around Mason, using the agent as a human shield. The .38 was a few inches from Mason's skull. "I'll blow his brains out."

Cass fought the urge to roll her eyes. The man had probably learned everything he knew about hostage negotiation from an action movie. "No, you won't." She worked hard to project a calm confidence into her voice.

"Try me," he said, but his hand was shaking.

"You won't because you want to live. You want to find your daughter." _That might have been a little much sticky-sweetness._ She switched back to solid reason. "If you kill him, then there is nothing stopping me from killing you. Now, what good does that do your daughter?"

"I-i-it-it doesn't," he managed, but just barely.

"You're right; it doesn't." She took a shallow breath to get her sardonic side under control. "Why don't we make a trade? You let my partner go, and I'll do what I can to find your daughter." She worked to make it more personal. She and Mason had been out with a couple of other people for drinks, but they weren't partners.

"I don't believe you." The man's entire body, from the sparse bits of charcoal hair on top of his head to the severely overused soles what were likely his only pair of dress shoes, was shaking.

Cass decided to resort to brute force logic. "Look, you've only got two options here. You can let him go, and I can take you into custody. Or," she paused for a handful of heartbeats to allow her point to sink in, "you shoot him, then I shoot you, and then you get hauled out of here in a body bag, and I don't even know so much as your daughter's name, or where to start looking for her."

His hand stopped shaking. That had gotten through the panic to a few basic stirrings of logic and parental instinct.

"You're making the decision," she continued, trying to soothe him. "You can choose to help your daughter."

Slowly, he released Mason. The older agent coughed violently, struggling to force air into his lungs. The man may have been small, but any large amount of force exerted on a person's windpipe, regardless of the size of the person, would have produced the same coughing fit.

Cass carefully disarmed the intruder, making sure to return Mason's .40 caliber Sig Sauer to the gasping agent.

"What's your daughter's name?" she asked as she cuffed the man's hands behind his back.

"Anna," he answered. She couldn't see his faces, but she could tell by his voice that he was either crying or about to cry. "Anna Harmon."

"Do you have a picture of her, Mr. Harmon?"

"Wallet." He was crying.

"Do you want me to take him for processing?" Mason asked.

Cass, having relieved Harmon of his wallet, took a moment to respond. "Go ahead. I'm off shift in twenty minutes."

Mason directed Harmon to the door before throwing a muttered, "Thanks, Knight," over his shoulder.

"Don't mention it," Cass replied, but the other agent was already gone.

"Knight to Marklet," she said into her radio.

"Go ahead, Knight."

"Mason located. Hostile apprehended. Mason is bringing him up for processing."

"Hostile?" Marklet asked, irate. She had broken protocol by not radioing in for backup.

"That's affirmative."

"We will have a talk about this later, Knight."

"10-4." Cass groaned as she put her radio back on her waistband. She was probably going to have to find a new job. She hadn't even lasted the month of December in a low level position in AIS.

Her adrenaline levels were dropping back to normal when she remembered something that she had overheard. "Victims," she muttered. "Victims of a bioweapon." Her blood ran cold as she realized what he had meant. _KALKARA_. Morgarath's stolen weapon had been released.

The fingers of her left hand drummed a restless tattoo on her leg as she walked the rest of her shift. The moment she was finished, she rushed through a shower, changed back into her street clothes in the locker room, then made her way to the president's office on the fourth floor.

* * *

Marisi Serrano reckoned that he had passed "Critically Sleep Deprived" around twenty-seven hours ago. He couldn't sleep, though. Not with the information he wanted so close at hand. He had been trawling the internet for all large scale purchases made within the past ten years, looking for exorbitant expenditures, coupled with nations that did not have extradition treaties with Araluen and a few other factors. His bot net searches had turned up a few thousand results, so he was left with the task of narrowing down the search.

He still had forty-seven results left, so he threw in a few options that would filter for paranoia. After everything that had happened to Outsiders, Inc. in Araluen, Tennyson would probably be trying to lay low and be discrete.

Three results left. Marisi allowed himself a smile.

Four hours, three cups of coffee, two "borrowed" satellites, and one positive result later, Marisi allowed himself another smile before he picked up his phone and dialed the first number on his speed dial.

"It's me," he said when the other person picked up the phone. "I found him."

* * *

There were two types of rage. One was the wet, teary eyed, foaming at the mouth, might take your head off here in a moment, emotional kind. The other was the dry, ice cold, made of steel, going to murder you in your sleep kind of angry. The first kind would be violent, but it would blow over quickly. The second kind made any sane man double up on his security.

With his wife murdered and his daughter kidnapped seventeen years earlier, Duncan Reyes was utterly unfamiliar with how to deal with a woman in a full-blown fury. His recently found daughter, Cassandra, was storming around his office, steam practically boiling from her ears and daggers flying from her eyes, and reminding him of how unpleasant having a female in the family could be. Especially when that female is not only well-versed in politics and the workings of the government, but has also spent the previous seventeen years as a contract killer. A furious, dangerous woman with a folder full of damning evidence.

Duncan suppressed a flinch as Cassandra's fuming pacing took her past a priceless bust of Herbert Morose, an Araluen president, that had been made more than one hundred and fifty years earlier. While her anger was more of the dry species, a violent flare could happen at any moment and the marble statue would be the first to pay the price.

He supposed that he could understand part of her dilemma. Not only had she had Level 26 clearance, but she had also been an operative responsible for actually doing things, rather that pestering her father about them.

"Why did you not tell me about the virus?" Cassandra asked.

Duncan had been face to face with dangerous people. He had been in the military before running for political office. Cassandra's barely restrained rage is something he had seen before, but never on a person her age.

"You didn't need to know," he said, and watched the realization sink in on her face. She wasn't an operative anymore. She didn't have her security clearance anymore. This really wasn't supposed to be her problem. She had only stumbled into it by whatever meddling she had done.

"Which brings me to another point," Duncan said, eyeing his daughter. "What were you doing as a security guard?"

She eyed him back, the wet rage entirely gone and stone in its place. "I don't care what you want. I can't just forget my life and pretend to be normal. There are people out there who still want me dead, and, if I want to make it to my next birthday, then I have to take them out before they take me out. AIS had information that I needed, so I needed a way back in. Secret Service security was the easiest branch to get into, and, in my situation, to stay in."

Duncan jotted a note down. _Tighten hiring protocols._ "I can't just let you gallivant around, impersonating agents. You're my daughter."

She met his eyes. Peridot green to peridot green. They were so similar but so different. "You don't know me."

"I'd like to."

* * *

"So, boarding school? Seriously? Sending me away is your idea of getting to know me?" She could see where rhetorical games would get her: absolutely nowhere. She and the man sitting across from her were so similar, but so different. The direct approach, tinged with a bit of blackmail, would be the best approach. "I am going to keep doing what I'm doing regardless of whether you allow it or not. My goal here is staying alive. Now, if you don't allow it, then I can simply disappear and go God knows where, and maybe die, and you'll never know. Or," she let the word hand for dramatic emphasis, "you can let me go, and I'll operate just like a normal agent. Detailed reports, intended itinerary, plus legal access to government resources."

"You could have a normal life. Why would you choose to throw that away?"

She shook her head. "I never had a choice. I can't be the little girl you want me to be, and you can't save me. I will not live the rest of my life with human shields taking bullets that were meant for me when I could have prevented it. I end them first."

"Who's after you?"

"Alexander Tennyson, for starters. He was my last contract. He tried and failed to tie up loose ends. Morgarath, probably. And, of course, there's every Genovesan assassin out there. A lot of them are just as good as I am, and they can get in here just as easily as I got into the Secret Service security. There's no way you can protect me from all of them."

Duncan ran a hand through his hair. He'd seen her files. She was right and he knew it. "What do you need?"

Cassandra let out the breath she had been holding. "My agent status and my security clearance. And to not have to go back to that school."

He smiled ruefully. "That was a terrible idea, wasn't it?"

"Yeah," she deadpanned.

"What do you expect me to say to explain your absence?"

Cassandra's phone buzzed. "I have to take this," she said. There was no apology, but he hadn't expected one. He wouldn't have given one. "Yeah?" she said to whoever was on the other end of the line. They must have had some news, based on the grim smile that tugged at one corner of her mouth. "Excellent. When can you leave?" She chuckled darkly at whatever they said next, then said, "Don't worry. I'll handle it," and hung up.

She turned to face Duncan. "I have a location on Tennyson. I'd like to leave immediately."

Duncan nodded slowly. "You're not going without backup."

"I'm meeting my back-up."

"No. AIS back-up, not whatever mercenary you plan on relying on. If you back in the AIS, then you play this my way. AIS back-up, and plenty of paperwork, for starters, but I expect it all to come straight back to me. Am I understood?"

"Yes, sir," she said. She turned to leave, then whirled back around. "If it makes you feel any better, leaving will keep me away from the sickness."

* * *

After the door closed behind her, Duncan ran his hand through his hair again. At that rate, he'd be bald within a year. She had no idea how bad the sickness had already gotten.

* * *

"The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting." -Milan Kundera

* * *

 **A/N. Apologies for the delay. I just started college and all that entails (moving, getting adjusted, studying, first exams, etc). Thanks to** **Crazygirl061952 for giving me the kick in the tail I needed to finish this chapter up. Unfortunately, I have a lot going on, so updates will likely be sparse. Hang in there, guys. I'm not dead.**


	3. Too Easy

**Chapter 2: Too Easy**

The woods were far too quiet. Will fought the urge to check the safety on his gun and instead focused all of his energy on being completely still. The camouflage and the shadows would keep him concealed; it was up to him to not blow it by moving. _Trust the CLOAK._

He shook his head. The techs that outfitted the Ranger Corps with gear loved acronyms, so CLOAK stood for Camouflage Leaves Obscure Areas Known, which basically meant that, if you were wearing the gear and holding still, then the searcher's gaze would likely pass right over you.

Of course, this only worked if the searcher didn't know about the gear. Will wasn't so lucky; the people hunting him knew every single trick he had up his sleeve.

A rustle sounding in the leaves to his left. He fought the urge to jerk his head in that direction. As far as he knew, it was two against one, and the odds were not in his favor.

Time dragged itself along, second by agonizingly long second, until the rustle finally faded into the trees. He wanted to stretch his limbs, to move, to do anything, but a piece of advice from Halt, his mentor, rang in his ear. "Don't ever think it's safe just because you hear someone moving away. Always double check before you move."

Will forced his eyes to slowly comb through the trees, constantly shifting the focus and depth of his field of vision, allowing his peripheral vision to catch what the focus wouldn't. He was rewarded by a flash of movement at roughly head height some thirty meters away. It wasn't the right height to be a squirrel and too low to be a bird. _A face?_

He kept scanning, flicking his focus back to that spot every few moments. There was no other movement. Absolutely nothing.

His safety was off. He slowly raised the gun to his shoulder, peering carefully through the scope. The searcher would move again, and he was skilled enough that Will wouldn't see him until after he moved.

 _I need to aim for where he will be, not where he is._ He scanned the sight picture, looking for cover. _He's ambidextrous, so he could go either way._ The question became where the best cover was. There was an outcropping of rock three meters to the left of the tree, and a clump of low-growing mountain laurel four meters to the right. _If he goes to the right, his own shot will be obscured, but he'll still be able to see me. If he goes left, then he is blind._ Will smirked. _He likes to gloat, so he'll try to get closer before he shoots. He'll want to watch for me, so he'll go for the laurel. The trick will be hitting him before he gets there._

He stilled his breath, steading his aim, and remained stock still, waiting. There. The flicker of movement came again, but, this time, Will instinctively knew that it was his opponent, running for the bushes. Judging the time, he waited a tenth of a second longer, then pulled the trigger. The gun spat out its projectile and it hit the man a stride before he hit the laurel bushes. A green splat of paint decorated his gear, a testament to the accuracy of Will's aim.

He held in his celebration long enough to survey the battleground again, then rolled up onto his feet. Holding his own gun at the ready, he rounded the tree-

Only to walk straight into his other opponent, who had his gun trained on Will, waiting. "It appears," came the other man's voice, "that I win."

Will recognized the traces of the other man's Hibernian accent instantly. "Halt?" he asked. "I didn't know you were playing." They both lowered their paintball guns.

"And miss the opportunity to see one of my two apprentices be put in their place by the other? I wouldn't miss it for all of the coffee in Arridia," Halt replied, pulling the facemask off of his CLOAK gear and nodding towards Gil, who was making his way towards them, a large green paint blot across his chest. Coming from Halt, the expression was a wide, mirthful smile.

Gil was wearing a grin of his own. "How could you possibly have made that shot?" Gil was known through the Ranger Corps for unseen movement and camouflage. "Did you even see me?"

Will shook his head. "I guessed."

Gil gestured grandly at the paint on his chest. "Good guess." Though no one would ever tell him, Will was already starting to develop his own reputation in the Ranger Corps for quick thinking and keen instincts. Three highly successful missions in the last five months had proved that.

Halt was having similar thoughts. _He's growing._

Will finally relaxed enough to let his own smile shine through. "I never saw you," he said to Gil. "Only where you had been." It was true; Will had only seen signs of where Gil had been, not where he actually was. Even as they stood talking, Will could see both Gil's knack for finding and matching shadows and his CLOAK gear working to conceal the man.

Before Gil could reply, all three of their field radios beeped. Halt, being the senior of the three, answered. "Field Crew Delta to Base Camp, relay traffic."

"Base Camp to Field Crew Delta, return to Base Camp for immediate briefing." Movies that showed communication with field radios generally implied that there was a lot of squawking and static on the radios. That was not the case. Thanks to a twin silicon core receiver, the radios could communicate words as clearly as the speaker could when standing at the receiver's right shoulder.

"10-4. Anything 10-42?"

Will raised a questioning eyebrow to Gil. Field communication codes were not a skill that Rangers generally learned until their third year of training. Despite his burgeoning reputation, Will was still in his second year.

"Immediate threats," Gil mouthed in translation.

"That's a negative, Field Crew Delta. Special assignment."

"10-4," Halt told the radio, but his eyebrow quirked slightly. Though he was arguably the best field agent in the Corp, Halt had received his training in an era when technology had been rudimentary at best and subtle visual communication had been the key to an agent's success.

"I suppose we had best see what they're so excited about," Gil said, a note of interest in his voice. Special assignments tended towards the borderline insane end of the absolutely harebrained spectrum of a Ranger's missions.

"Oh, yes," Halt replied, "and I wouldn't want you to miss the opportunity to parade that battle wound through headquarters."

Gil regarded his paint blotch aggrievedly. "You're just jealous because you don't have one."

* * *

Horace "Jake" Altman was getting very bored with a desk job. Technically, though, he should have been out of a job. Assaulting the presidential complex with mercenaries and fugitives ought to have put him on death row, not garnered him a promotion.

Of course, the attack was classified as a counter-attack against a terrorist attack, and no one knew the real story. His commanding officer, an individual with whom he did not have the best reputation, had not shared the president's view that the assault was an act of courage and moral sacrifice. When the president had failed to be specific regarding the nature of Jake's promotion, the commanding officer had given the special forces operative the worst job he could possibly think of: intelligence services liaison.

Some days, Jake would prefer taking the death sentence.

He missed action, tactics, and a total absence of paperwork and political red tape. Approving missions, denying missions, logistics work, and coordinating with agents and forces on foreign soil had become his life, and he hated every moment of it.

He was in the middle of a briefing on the illegal sale of melons in Arridia when his commander's commander, General Isaiah Rodney, intruded. "Pardon me, gentlemen," he said, though, with his rank, he need not have apologized in the first place. "Altman, you have orders from on high."

Jake excused himself from the room and regarded the General with a puzzled expression. "What orders?" he asked.

In answer, Rodney handed Jake his cell phone. "Explain to me later how Cassandra Reyes got my cell phone number." The general turned and walked into the briefing room, closing the door behind him.

Jake stared after him. _Cassandra Reyes?_ It took a moment for the name to click.

"Long time no see," he said, slouching against the wall and propping the phone to his ear with his shoulder. His other hand was digging around in his pocket for his own phone. Seven missed calls, all from the same number.

The girl on the other end of the line chuckled. "Yeah, I guess it has been. Now, tell me, how would you feel about a trip to Picta?"

Jake raised an eyebrow as he repocketed his phone. "Picta? What for?"

"Well, I'm planning a little black ops mission, and legal over here at AIS tells me that I have to have a special forces advisor with me. He also mentioned to me how someone had thought it would be a good idea to stick you with a desk job. Long story short, I laughed in his face, then decided to call you. Your phone went to voicemail, so I started going through the directory, starting with the person with the biggest clout closest to you. So, about going to Picta, are you in?"

"I'm not allowed to assign myself missions," he said, regretfully, "but I can refer you to-"

Cassandra cut him off. "This is not your average mission. If you want in, the paperwork and stuff will be handled. If not, I can find someone else."

Jake rubbed his thumb down the crease between his brows. "Is this legal?"

"Not precisely. The president, however, has cleared me to act at my discretion."

"And the paperwork will be handled?"

He could hear the smirk in her response. She had him, and she knew it. "Yep. All you have to do is pack a bag."

"When do we leave?"

"Be at the presidential complex at 0600 hours the day after tomorrow. They'll be expecting you."

"Alright," Jake said.

He didn't hear anything, then realized that Cassandra had hung up. She never had been good with pleasantries. _Fare the well, desk._

* * *

Marisi Serrano, currently operating under his old alias of Matthew Shaw, had broken precisely fourteen laws on his way back into Araluen. Compared to some of his past exploits, the fourteen crimes were like little playground transgressions.

Granted, the last time he had checked, he was a wanted terrorist.

The man tied up in his trunk would have agreed with that assertion. Though, technically, the smuggler known as Black O'Malley had absolutely no room to talk, much less charge Marisi with terrorism, kidnapping, or intentionally hitting every single pothole between Hibernia and Araluen.

The two of them could have been friends, under different circumstances.

Araluen City lay at the heart of the country, and it was a relief for Marisi to see it once again, even if getting caught meant that he could spend the rest of his life in prison. Hopefully Taylor-"Cassandra," he corrected-had talked to her father.

It was taking longer than he had expected for his brain to normalize the fact that his old partner was the Cassandra Reyes, who he knew better by a dozen other names including Taylor Rockwell. Every time he thought of her, his mind hesitated, confused about which label to put on her.

His phone buzzed just as he exited the interstate. Cass had been very sparse on details when they had last spoken and her most recent text message was just as vague. _112 + Herbert = 4_.

It took him a moment to decipher the message. 112th Street and Herbert Boulevard was the corner where one Araluen's most prominent coffee shops sat. But the plus sign meant that they weren't meeting there; he was just supposed to pick her up. The four meant that she had brought company, but the equal sign said that company could be involved.

When he pulled up to the curb forty-five minutes later, Cass was waiting, two cups of coffee in hand and a grin on her face. He reckoned that the smile was due to the badge on her belt and the gun at her hip. "I take it," he said, a smirk dancing across his features, "that you have managed to legitimize things a little with your father."

"Perhaps," she answered. "Or maybe I stole it." She handed a cup through the open window.

He shook it experimentally. "This one's half empty," Marisi protested.

"Oops. That one's mine. Why are you stealing my coffee?"

 _She really must be feeling good if she's joking about her coffee._ "Why are you stealing AIS badges?" he fired back. "Anyways, where's the company?"

"Waiting on their orders. The place is hopping today, and they were almost out of honey when I was in there. You know how particular our friends can be about their coffee. They're going to follow us in, just to make sure they get through security."

Those words told Marisi all he needed to know about their "company." Once again, it seemed he was doomed to be working with Rangers.

* * *

Will's eyes constantly flicked around the room, taking in the details of the conference room. He sat sandwiched between Halt and Gil at a round table, facing a big screen television and a corkboard covered in satellite photos and topographical maps. Another board held a genetic map, a list of symptoms, a map of Araluen City, and some kind of demographic calculations. Malcolm and Crowley sat across from them, along with Captain Horace Jacob "Jake" Altman and General Isaiah Rodney from Special Forces.

All of the men seated around the table were restless. Malcolm consistently checked his cell phone, the glow from the screen turning his already ashen skin even lighter. Both men in uniform were drumming their fingers on the table. Will suspected that the general was even experiencing restless leg syndrome.

"What are we waiting on?" Will muttered to Gil.

The older Ranger's fingertips were drumming a restless tattoo on his leg, but he forced himself to remain still otherwise. "The ones conducting the briefing."

"Then who-" Will began, but the intrusion of Cassandra and Duncan Reyes cut him off mid-question. The two were arguing just as forcefully as they had been the last time Will had seen them, but, this time, the argument seemed more focused on logistics than on matters of blackmail or imprisonment. In their wake was Marisi, or Matthew Shaw, or whatever his name actually happened to be. He'd had to create a chart to understand the former Genovesans and their various aliases and when to use which one. They could slip from one identity to the next as fluidly as they breathed, and each identity was as fully fleshed out as any of the rest.

"You can have one daily check-in with reports completed upon return to base. No more and no sooner," the girl insisted. "This is not a diplomatic negotiation; this is a black-ops assassination. And even those check-ins run the risk of costing us our lives. It would be best if we were off-grid entirely."

Will's breath caught. _Assassination?_

"That is not an option, and you know it. AIS is based on oversight and responsibility, and, if you want the clearance and access, then you are going to have to accept the things that come with it."

Cassandra eyed the room, meeting the gazes of everyone already seated. "We can finish this discussion later," she said, lowering her voice.

"And we will finish it," Duncan agreed. He then turned to face the room. "Good morning, gentlemen. Thank you all for coming. As you all well know, there are two matters we need to discuss."

Will raised an eyebrow. He hadn't known that there were two matters.

"The first concerns an operation on foreign soil. For that, I will turn the briefing over to Cassandra."

"Thank you, President Reyes," Cassandra said. _Cool tone, even eyes, steady hand. She's forcing herself to be professional._ "Six months ago, there was a series of attacks here in Araluen City. A bombing, a sniper attack, and an assault on the presidential complex. All of these we believe to be the work of terrorists supported by this man, Alexander Tennyson." She thumbed the remote, and the photo of a heavy-set man dressed in solid white popped onto the screen.

Will stared for a moment. They all knew about the attack on the presidential complex. Didn't they? His eyes flicked around the room. _Rodney_. The general was the only outsider in the room. All the rest of them had either been involved in the attack or had later found out about it. _She's making up the entire story for his benefit._

Will watched her movements more closely, and, out of the corner of his eye, he noticed Halt doing the same. _She's not even nervous._

"Recent intelligence analysis reveals that Tennyson fled to Picta after cashing out of his company, Outsiders, Inc. We have managed to isolate his exact location based on extensive analysis of surveillance data and local accounts. For that, I refer you to my partner." She gestured to the boy standing next to her.

"Alexander Tennyson is easy to profile," Marisi/Shaw said, stepping forward and taking the remote from his partner. "He is paranoid with a case of acute narcissism. Right now, after a failed attack on the president, he will also be in self-preservation mode. With that kind of fear and paranoia, he would run, but he'd make sure that he was living well when he did.

"Two days after the attack on the presidential complex, Tennyson cashed out the entirety of Outsiders, Inc. and left the country. Customs agents were able to track him as far as Nihon-Ja, but after that, they lose him. To find him again, our analysis filtered through over fifteen thousand large sale real estate purchases, focusing on those purchases made in countries that have not signed an extradition treaty with Araluen.

"To narrow it down further, we determined that it must be isolated, with a form of backdoor access to either a waterway, a train, or a road. From there, we ran a filtering algorithm through the satellite imagery that analyzed the relative comings and goings in the last six months and compared them to the average patterns over the last three years. When we were down to only three locations, we thoroughly examined satellite footage for a positive identification. And we got one."

The photograph that appeared on the screen was a little blurry, in black and white, and clearly taken from a satellite, but it was clearly Alexander Tennyson.

"We have a very simple objective," the boy continued. "Get in. Confirm the target. Eliminate the target. Get out. There is already an individual on standby to smuggle a team into Picta. Myself, Agent Reyes, and Captain Altman have already been cleared for this operation. We are looking for some representatives from the Ranger Corps –" he paused for a half a moment, and then corrected, "from Covert Ops to accompany us."

Post Morgarath's ejection from executive office, the Rangers had been allowed to return as a legitimate part of AIS, albeit a relatively unsupervised part of AIS. Of course, with the public controversy following Morgarath's involuntary departure, the Ranger Corps were simply the "Covert Ops" branch, rather than an independent agency.

Crowley turned to the three of them. "It's a strictly volunteer mission. We can't make you go."

"Why don't we," Halt's Hibernian burr was fully noticeable as he considered the words, "wait until the conclusion of the briefing? Think it over a little bit?"

That was when Will realized that Halt was talking to him, strongly recommending that he take this assignment. His mentor had his eyes on Crowley, on Duncan, but living and working with him for two years had given Will an understanding for Halt's more obvious subtexts. _Why do you want me to go?_

Duncan nodded. "Our other concern is of far more pressing importance. What I am about to tell you is highly classified. This information is not to be discussed with anyone outside of this room under penalty of treason. Should this be a problem with any of you, you may leave now."

Will's eyes flicked around the room again, watching all of the faces in his realm of vision. No one budged. No one flinched.

"Very well. As of two days ago, we received confirmation that KALKARA had been released. As of right now, there are three confirmed cases. Dr. Malkallam is seeing that they are treated, and he and his staff are working around the clock on synthesizing a cure. Doctor?"

Malcolm stood, very intentionally placing his phone face-down on the table. His knees popped as they straightened into place, and, judging by the bags under his eyes, the tremor in his hand, and the coffee close at hand, he had not slept in days. "Thank you, Mr. President. As it stands, it appears that KALKARA was an incomplete weaponization. There is currently no vaccine or cure for this disease. My team and I are doing a complete genetic analysis of this disease, but we are severely understaffed. Any resources the government can contribute will be appreciated."

Will noticed the glare Cassandra shot at Duncan as the latter checked some information in a file. _Just how many things do they argue about?_

"We will have to vet a bio-terrorism team," Duncan said, rubbing his knuckles between his eyes. "Because of how classified this is, we cannot afford for this kind of information to leak before we have a response or a cure or a vaccine. There will be riots if it does."

Malcolm nodded slowly, the motion reminding Will of a bobblehead. "I had expected as much. In the meantime," he said, pointing to the corkboard with the map and the demographic information, "I can guess by the distribution of the victims we have treated thus far that there are most definitely parts of the Lake Sector and North Sector that have been affected. We only have three cases so far, but I suspect that the number will grow very quickly."

One of Halt's eyebrows had been paying very close attention ever since Malcolm had mentioned the Lake Sector. "Do we know how the disease is transmitted?" he asked, accent drawing out his vowels ever so slightly.

Malcolm shook his head. "That's part of the hell of it. We are working completely from scratch. Apparently, all of the files on it were wiped clean. We don't know anything about how it behaves, or how long of an incubation period we're looking at, or how it's transmitted, or how to stop it." He bowed his head slightly. "I'm afraid that people are probably going to die before we can figure it out. In fact, unless we can recover the data from the KALKARA research files, find a similar pattern in another disease, or completely reverse engineer the whole entire thing, people are going to have to die so that we can know for sure."

 _And now I understand why Halt wants me gone. And why Duncan isn't putting up more of a fight._ Will closed his eyes, panic soaking into his nervous system. _This is nothing we were ever trained for._

"What do we know, Doctor?" Rodney asked, speaking up for the first time.

"This virus is a linear, double-stranded molecule has relatively small (725 bp) inverted terminal repeat (ITR) sequences containing three 69-bp direct repeat elements, a 54-bp partial repeat element, and a 105-base telomeric end-loop that can be maximally base-paired to contain 17 mismatches. In fact, the composition reminds me very much of a study I did on smallpox over thirty years ago. It's not smallpox, but it looks like it's been genetically engineered to be as nasty as smallpox. And it seems to be mutating very, very quickly. Once we do engineer a cure, we will have to have a rapid dispersal system. Otherwise, it might mutate again and render any cure ineffective."

Duncan nodded and looked to Rodney and Crowley. "Get everyone we know on this. I don't care if they're legal or not. Just don't tell them what it's for. You know what to do."

"Worst case scenario, Doctor. How long before this whole thing goes critical?" Crowley asked.

Malcolm thought for a moment before answering. "I'm making a lot of assumptions about transmission and incubation periods, but I'd guess we'd be looking at ten thousand infections within the week. Probably seventy-five to eighty percent of those infections will prove fatal within ten days of initial exposures."

Will flinched. _Eight thousand people_.

Everyone else reacted similarly, he noticed. Malcolm looked weary, showcasing just how many hours of sleep he hadn't had. Gil had stopped moving, going completely and utterly still; even his eyes were staring straight ahead. Halt had suddenly become a restless ball of kinetic motion, needing to act. Crowley's brow had furrowed. The skin around Rodney's eyes had tightened. _He is used to casualties._ Altman was cracking his knuckles, ready to go. The president and Shaw reacted identically, both dragging a hand through their hair.

The knuckles of Cassandra's right hand were white as she clenched her fist. She had bitten down hard on her lip, probably because swearing was generally considered inappropriate in high-level briefings. Even with her background, assassins weren't terrorists. "You're going to have to lock this city down. Airports, trains, everything. In fact, you might want to lock the entire country down."

"Operation Wraith?" Crowley asked, and Halt and Rodney nodded.

"We can call it terrorism," Rodney agreed. "And shut everything down for the investigation."

"What is Operation Wraith?" Duncan asked.

Halt smirked. "It's above your paygrade."

Duncan groaned. "Crowley, read me in. Now."

"It's a terrorist attack, but one we can control. We take a plane full of cadavers, crash it into a field, and blame someone else," Crowley answered. "That's the short version."

The president massaged his temples. "Do I even have to tell you how many treaties, laws, and ethical codes that plan violates?"

"We're good guessers," Halt answered.

Rodney and Crowley conferred briefly. "We can have Wraith in the air in two hours, sir," the general said.

"How long have you even had this infernal thing on standby?"

"Seventeen years."

Duncan buried his face in his hands. "I don't even want to know. Just do it."

* * *

Cass knew that it had been too easy to make Duncan give in. They were too similar for him to give up without his own motives. _He wants me out of the line of fire._

Were she not furious, she would have been touched.

"I believe," Rodney said, and her eyes landed on him, "That is all this council needed to know."

She liked Rodney, but, at that moment, she wanted to scream at anyone and anything. Being out-manipulated was a sensation that she knew, but was not fond of.

She had just opened her mouth when Halt stood, glanced to Will, nodded, and caught her attention. "I suppose that's settled then. Will shall accompany you to Picta. You know what you need and what you need to do. See to it."

* * *

"But maybe I've been here before/I've seen this room and I've walked this floor/You know, I used to live alone before I knew ya/And I've seen your flag on the marble arch/And love is not a victory march/It's a cold and it's a broken Hallelujah." -"Hallelujah" by Jeff Buckley.


End file.
